Anyone put lots of video in iTunes?

I'm starting to think about putting my DVDs in iTunes for organizing and playing without the disc. Since iTunes is turning into more than just an audio organizer, I'm wondering if some of you are doing this and how.

I think it would be cool to have my DVDs in iTunes, ready to play whenever I want. Whether I play it on the screen, or on a TV, or transfer it to my iPhone or iPod. The thing I'm not sure about is proper encoding of the video so it still looks good on all those screens. Anyone do this?

I'm starting to think about putting my DVDs in iTunes for organizing and playing without the disc. Since iTunes is turning into more than just an audio organizer, I'm wondering if some of you are doing this and how.

I think it would be cool to have my DVDs in iTunes, ready to play whenever I want. Whether I play it on the screen, or on a TV, or transfer it to my iPhone or iPod. The thing I'm not sure about is proper encoding of the video so it still looks good on all those screens. Anyone do this?

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I do this!!! But i cheat, DO NOT RIP YOUR VIDEOS INTO IPOD FORMAT. Its really small and looks like complete ass when played back on your computer. You need to use ffxmpeg and handbrake, and rip into .h264 at full resolution so 720xwhatever. I ll get you the exact numbers when i get home. Your ipod will still play the video fine, and it will be alot crisper and then your computer will play it back crisp too, even in full screen.

Basically you need an app called handbrake to rip the discs and if you choose the right settings, bitrate, etc , it should play fine once ripped, i use ffxmpeg to fix files which are È not ipod compatibleÈ. If you rip into ipod format, its automatically a tiny resolution and while it looks great on the ipod , it looks like ass on the computer

I use iTunes for all the music videos I have (over 300). Biggest pain in the ass is that it tags them as movies and you have to manually go in an change each one to music video in a drop down (you can't select all of them and change them at once like you can with MP3s). Then, if you ever move them, they lose the music video tab and you have to do it over again. They retain all the other ID3 info but not that. WTF? Other then that it works well. It would be nice if it separated music videos from plain old music but it just keeps music videos in with all the MP3s in the music section.

So I guess I have to have two versions-- one for TV and one for iPhone/iPod. That really sucks.

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no, drloveless was saying that you could encode the files as .h264 instead of iPod format (which is mp4). it is just a higher res version so it'll look nice on your TV while still be able to play on your iPod. you'll probably end up with a larger file though.

they really need to make a batch where you can set them as tv shows/music videos

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yeah, i'm surprised because that is such an annoying flaw in iTunes and it isn't like they just added video to the software. it is really stupid that they handle videos exactly the same as music files when editing in batch.

no, drloveless was saying that you could encode the files as .h264 instead of iPod format (which is mp4). it is just a higher res version so it'll look nice on your TV while still be able to play on your iPod. you'll probably end up with a larger file though.

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I tried. Encoded a chapter with handbrake using the apple tv preset which uses h264. iTunes says I can't put it on my iPhone.

Biggest pain in the ass is that it tags them as movies and you have to manually go in an change each one to music video in a drop down ..Then, if you ever move them, they lose the music video tab and you have to do it over again.

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Use MetaX to do your tagging. You can set batches of titles as "TV Show" or whatever you like, AND it writes it to the file, not iTunes' XML file (so you don't have to ever redo it).